1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to the manufacturing of electronic devices. More particularly, the invention provides a system and method for reducing costs associated with custom programming of electronic devices during manufacturing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, electronic devices have been manufactured in a generic form. All consumers receive the same electronic device regardless of whether the device meets their exact needs. For example, early televisions required the consumer to manually program each channel they wanted to watch. Since over-air broadcast frequencies vary geographically, a manufacturer could not pre-program the television set without limiting the television's use to a specific geographic region. A consumer may have preferred having the television pre-programmed, but this would burden the manufacturer and increase the cost of the item. Equipping televisions with the ability to scan the entire bandwidth for viewable channels eventually solved this challenge for the consumer and manufacturer. However, as technology has advanced, consumers and technology have demanded even more customization from the manufacturer in their products.
More recently, the ubiquitous videocassette recorder (“VCR”) entered the consumer marketplace to complement the existing television. This new device invariably included a remote control for remote operation of the VCR from anywhere in the consumer's family room. Almost immediately, the consumer demanded that they only wanted to use a single or unified remote control for both the television and VCR. Manufacturers responded with a consumer programmable remote control to complement the VCR. This convenience came at a price to the consumer, since enabling this feature required them to program their specific brand of television into the VCR, often by way of a three-digit code. However, technology today has far surpassed the VCR, and with this evolution, the ability for a consumer to program a product for his or her own needs has become prohibitively difficult.
Today, consumers must increasingly rely upon manufacturers who have the expertise to program modem consumer products as the amount of custom software required has trampled the simple three-digit code of the VCR. For example, cellular phones, which are becoming as common as VCRs, require customization for each end user. This customization includes not only information to identify the end user, but also includes their chosen mode of telecommunication technology, such as analog and/or digital. Hundreds of lines of code may be required to program a cellular phone for a specific user.
Because today's technology requires this level of programming, the manufacturer is required to incorporate this step into their manufacturing process and allocate additional space in the memory devices residing in the electronic device. Thus, to provide the consumer these choices, manufacturers spend a significant amount of time and resources programming such products for the consumer. This additional step, to customize each product for each user, increases the fabrication time and eventually is passed on to the consumer in the cost of the product. This need for additional customization may be dealt with by increasing the size of the memory allocated for such programming, but this solution also results in increased costs and reduced portability in the electronic device. None of these results are palatable to the consumer.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method for decreasing the process time in programming a consumer product while maintaining or increasing the level of customization required by today's consumer in our high-technology environment.